Crisis resilience: lessons from Virginia Tech

On July 20, as I read about the mass shooting in Aurora, I had the same horrified reaction that I felt five years ago, when a similar tragedy occurred while I was a professor at Virginia Tech.

On Monday, April 16, 2007, student Seung-Hui Cho shot more than 50 people in the classrooms of Norris Hall, killing 27 students, five faculty, and then himself. In the years following, I sought to understand the campus community as it moved forward. What I learned at Virginia Tech may offer some insight into how a community can respond to an unspeakable tragedy.

The campus and community drew together after the shootings, forging a common story about our relationship to the tragedy, a story that became a source of strength and solidarity by enabling us to reject divisive stories that others in the media wanted to tell. Although unity often follows tragedy or disaster, solidarity is not always the case.

For example, national solidarity with the people of New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in August 2005 was tempered by sensationalized coverage of violence and looting in the Super Dome shelter. Although some media highlighted rescuer and resident bravery, the community as a whole was seldom associated with these positive characteristics, which undermined solidarity.

After the Virginia Tech shootings, the possibility that the community might be caught up in blame-casting seemed possible, with a focus on when the campus was locked down, and how Cho was allowed to reach his senior year without medical or disciplinary intervention. However, it did not turn out that way — people focused on uniting around those closest to the victims. For example Jerzy Nowak, husband of Jocelyne M. Couture-Nowak, who died while defending her French class, said afterwards that, “The compassion and support that we have received from our community, including co- workers and university colleagues, were so unique that I never considered leaving Blacksburg.”

Efforts to promote unity began immediately. That night, students organized a memorial vigil on the drillfield in the center of campus. The day after the shootings, 10,000 people attended a convocation at Cassell Coliseum. Poet Nikki Giovanni urged us to take time to reflect and learn, rather than strive to “move on” quickly from the tragedy. She said, “We are better than we think we are and not quite what we want to be … . We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.”

Giovanni asked us to broaden our compassion to include those suffering from other social crises, such as AIDS and warfare, as well as ecological crises such as drought and the suffering that humans inflict on other species—an appeal that connected us in our grief to all who suffer.

People continued to meet and support one another that week in and out of classrooms. As one of my students told me, “The amazing thing about the love and friendship and support we shared is that it trumps the anger and hate which started this tragedy. I wish Cho could see that as a community we have not dissolved into bitterness, that hate does not beget hate.”

Virginia Tech sociologists John Ryan and James Hawdon described the collective understanding that emerged. We came to understand the shootings as an isolated incident, carried out by a mentally ill individual who held himself apart from the community. We were not responsible for Cho’s fatal choices and could neither have foreseen nor prevented it. We knew that the effect on our community would be long lasting, but we would prevail, and the whole country — and indeed the whole world — supported us in our grief.

Has Virginia Tech recovered from the 2007 shooting? I think that the school has recovered, and not just from the passage of time. People had to intentionally unify in order to recover, heal, and to function again. Efforts to promote healing can catalyze the collective energy and purpose that is released during a crisis before it is eclipsed by helplessness and hopelessness. Rather than being told how to feel or what to do, people come to their own understanding of resilience, drawing on their own knowledge and telling their own stories. This can promote trust and empathy, foster understanding of our interdependence, and help us recover, even from tragedies like this.
Bruce Goldstein is associate professor of environmental design at University of Colorado Boulder. He studies how communities develop collaborative responses to social-ecological challenges.

Well, isn’t that special. I don’t suppose anyone discussed the idiocy of banning concealed carry permits and weapons on campus carried by law-abiding citizens who could have minimized the damage done by Cho.

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

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